The Shadow Isle

With only one installment left in Kerr's popular Deverry cycle, this 14th novel set in her fantasy realm of Annwn sets the stage for a climactic finale that fans have been anticipating since 1986's Daggerspell . The collective future of the humans, elves, dwarves, dragons and other fantastical inhabitants of Deverry is in jeopardy. Savage Horsekin tribes escalate their bloody assaults on Northlands settlements in the name of their goddess, Alshandra. As apprentice wizard Neb struggles to come to grips with his past life as the powerful sorcerer Nevyn, the magical island of Haen Marn suddenly reappears from nowhere, and few can agree whether this bodes well or ill. With multiple simultaneous plot lines, many of them dealing with relationships in past incarnations, pacing and continuity wallow, and the ending is merely an arrangement of chess pieces for the complex endgame of the final volume (tentatively titled The Silver Mage ). (May)